Harbor Jim of Newfoundland

by Alden Eugene Bartlett

"I know my limitations. A city chap told me about them once and I thanked him." Jim chuckled at the remembrance.

"'Look ahere,' the city chap said to me, 'do you know you've lost all the G's out of your vocabulary. Your words don't look nor sound natural. You better start in putting them on. And there is no such word as ain't. Remember that or you can't talk in polite society.'

"I presume he knew, for he talked as though he was on good terms with a dictionary; and when he went fishing and caught the hook in his hand he said words that weren't in the dictionary, and that came near breaking the first commandment. I've got some of those G's put back on, but not all. Two things is helping me on the job, the reading of the Good Book and the children.

"Book learnin's a fine thing. I'm stumblin' along thru a book or two myself, but I callate the prophets didn't refer to book knowledge when they wrote of wisdom, but rather heart and soul wisdom. The promise I recollect was this: 'For wisdom shall enter into thine heart and knowledge shall be pleasant unto thy soul.'

Then he reached for his Bible, but before he opened it he said:

"This is the most valuable thing in this house. I've been in houses in St. John's fussed up with furniture and things, so many you felt you would disturb 'em by setting down, but this book wasn't no where to be seen and once I asked a woman to let me look at the Book, and she said she'd have to keep me waitin' till she found it, but she was quite sure she had it. Guess its wisdom never got very far into her soul.

"It's a satisfyin' book. Readin' of it is like quenching your thirst at a hill spring. In the days afore I was converted as a young fellow with the rest, I used to sail over to the French Island of St. Pierre and smuggle in a few gallons of rum. But it never quenched my thirst. It would leave me afterward, all-fired thirsty. But open this book and you find fountains of cool water.

"I've tried in the years to halt at the springs as Moses and his people did when they crossed the desert and come to a spring. There's many a river of the water o' life flowing sweet and fair as we journey thru the good book, but to me the promises are the springs and wife and I have lingered longest at the springs. We've marked them and there's a good many of them and we haven't found them all yet. She has helped me mark 'em. A fisherman's hands get a bit calloused and clumpsy and she does most of the markin', but I do my share of the discoverin'. It's always a happy night, when we find a new spring and rejoice in a new promise, but it's a glad night when we quench our thirst at any one of the never-failing springs. Their all of 'em fresh an' sparklin'; there's nary a one of His that are salt or bitter.

"Effie keeps a pencil handy there with her sewing things and when I find a new promise, I hand over the book to her and she underlines it. Then the favorite springs we mark in the margin, so we'll find 'em easy as we journey."